Roger Lea MacBride ’51

Roger died Mar. 5, 1995, in Miami Beach. Within the class, he was sui generis. There was no one like him — a lawyer, a Presidential candidate, an author, and a TV producer. Roger prepared at Exeter. At Princeton, he was a politics major, a member of Cloister Inn, president of Clio, and active in campus political organizations.

After getting a law degree from Harvard in 1954, Roger joined the New York law firm of White & Case. He resigned, moved to Vermont, and served a term in the state legislature, where his reputation was that of a gadfly, proposing, for instance, bills to abolish the state's college system.

In 1976, he ran for President on the Libertarian ticket and, in a barnstorming trip in an old DC-3 he had bought, got more publicity than votes. Nevertheless, he joined the short list of Princeton alumni who have run for President: Aaron Burr Jr., James Madison, Woodrow Wilson, Norman Thomas, and Adlai Stevenson.

Roger was involved in the production of the Little House on the Prairie TV series, since he was the adopted son of Rose, author Laura Ingalls Wilder's only daughter. When he died, Roger was writing a series of young adult books on Rose's childhood.

He is survived by a daughter, Abigail Adams MacBride, and two sisters, Patricia and Pamela. The class sends its condolences.